The ACLU – Bible Enemy No. 1

by Wayne Jackson

In some public schools, it’s a science textbook. What’s taught in Sunday school shouldn’t be taught in Monday through Friday school. But that’s exactly what’s happening. School officials that impose their religious beliefs on your children are in direct violation of the First Amendment. Help us defend your rights. Support the ACLU (quoted from www.aclu.org; emphasis original).

The foregoing text is pathetically filled with distortion of the most insidious variety. It is so reckless in its treatment of fact as to have no credibility at all; yet thousands will read it and receive it as truth. We register our protest in the following response.

(1) The Bible is not, and so far as I know never has been, used as a “science textbook” in any “public school”—or private school, for that matter. The Bible does not address “science” per se. It says nothing about the composition of matter—electrons, protons, neutrons, etc. It makes no attempt to define the law of gravity. It contains no chart of the chemical elements. The accusation, therefore, is supremely false.

What Christians do contend is this: the Bible contains a vast body of evidence which supports its claim of divine origin.

One of the ways an honest student can explore this affirmation is to raise this question: when the Scriptures touch upon an issue that somehow relates to science, does one have a right to expect the narratives to be accurate, if, in fact, they originated with God? The answer must be in the affirmative.

And so, while the Bible never pretends to be a science textbook, it is not at variance with any known scientific truth. This has been demonstrated countless times.

(2) Another important point is this: the issue of origins is not within the domain of scientific investigation. That which occurred “in the beginning” cannot be subjected to the scientific method, which involves observation, experimentation, and either falsification or verification.

But the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has no problem with humanists teaching an anti-theistic materialism relative to origins. They advocate a skeptical “liberty” to teach a “no-God” brand of “science,” but Christians are not at liberty to propose the idea that materialism is not an adequate explanation for the origin of things. The ACLU is really the Anti-Christian-Liberty Union!

(3) With a smirking patronization, the ACLU ad suggests that these Bible-believing simpletons may teach whatever they wish on Sunday, but on Monday through Friday your children will be taught what the skeptics wish them to learn.

The fact is, whatever is truth ought to be taught on any day of the week. It is not the day of the week that counts; the issue is, where does the truth lie? This is the question the ACLU does not wish to confront.

(4) The statement that “religious beliefs” are “in direct violation of the First Amendment” is ludicrous on the face of it.

Is the Declaration of Independence at variance with the First Amendment? It states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights . . .”

The First Amendment prohibits the Congress from establishing a religion; it is not a mandate against all religious considerations. Some of the bizarre interpretations of the First Amendment by the U. S. Supreme Court in recent years are an affront to human intelligence.

Remember this: it only takes the view of five people (a majority opinion) to turn the moral and religious tide of the entire nation! There is no better example of the “tail wagging the dog.”

What a perverse operation it is, when the ACLU uses the Bible—which it detests so much—as a money-raising scheme for its God-dishonoring agenda.